Has OLED a future?

[drummerman]

I think currently OLED is still the technology if blacks are a priority.

However, I also think it will go the way of the dodo.

The inherent limitations ie organic substance, burn in, substantially higher power consumption, limited ultimate brightness and gradual panel deterioration seem very familiar. We've been there before with Plasma.

Once another way is found (such as micro led) I just have a feeling OLED will quickly disappear, more so as only one manufacturer is actually making the panels. The others have made little investment into the technology other than the driving hard/software.

Plenty of life life left in LED on the other hand.

 

[cs2011]

I agree.

OLED is really just a stop-gap technology before Micro-LED (aka Inorganic LED) arrives. As you say, the organic compounds used are inherently unstable and have limited lifespan. Micro-LED on the other hand is based on a mature technology which uses stable inorganic compounds of gallium, arsenic, indium and phosphorous. Inorganic LED indicator bulbs have been around for decades now, but the task is to put millions of them on a large panel at a sensible cost.

I am sure that a lot of the TV manufacturers are working on Micro-LED, and LG are just making hay while the sun shines !

 

[Native_bon]

I agree also due to the main factor of limited brightness capabilities, also you would have thought prices would be down by now. Still too expensive to manufacturer. Vertical banding is also a main problem especially in sizes 65inch & above. The future of Oled is not looking very good at this moment in time.

 

[bigboss]

If you had posted this 5 years ago, I would have agreed. But I don't think that is the case now. LG uses what’s called WRGB OLED where each pixel is a combination of a white OLED with red, green and blue filters, thus avoiding the need to use a blue OLED at all. It's the blue OLED that decays with time. The new LG OLED panels reduce to half brightness after 100000 (hundred thousand) hours, which is far more than anyone would keep their TV for. With regards to power consumption, it's minimal really. All modern TVs consume about £20-£30 worth of power in the entire year. So the power consumption is nowhere near "significant" as you claim. The first generation OLED TV reached 370 nits brightness, which has increased every year. In the labs though, the story is very different. The use of macromolecular species like polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) in conjunction with the use of phosphorescent species such as Ir for printed OLEDs have exhibited brightnesses as high as 10,000 nits. So it's not as if the technology has peaked already. LCD/LED in its various forms have been around for more than 40 years, so have had so many years to mature. OLED in comparison is only a baby. Self emitting technology will always be superior and accurate, that's Physics. You can create a full array backlight of upto 512 zones, or micro LED to create upto 10000 zones, with each zone able to switch itself off independent of others. But they're nowhere near the 8 million pixels individually capable of doing the same which the OLED does. It will be interesting to see where OLED would be, by the time micro LED is commercially viable and competing on price.

 

[bigboss]

How the TVs are going to be used will be the major driver in which technology will succeed. OLED TVs can be transparent or even rollable, apart from being wafer thin. It's more ready currently to blend into a future home.

 

[Native_bon]

If you had posted this 5 years ago, I would have agreed. But I don't think that is the case now. LG uses what’s called WRGB OLED where each pixel is a combination of a white OLED with red, green and blue filters, thus avoiding the need to use a blue OLED at all. It's the blue OLED that decays with time. The new LG OLED panels reduce to half brightness after 100000 (hundred thousand) hours, which is far more than anyone would keep their TV for. With regards to power consumption, it's minimal really. All modern TVs consume about £20-£30 worth of power in the entire year. So the power consumption is nowhere near "significant" as you claim. The first generation OLED TV reached 370 nits brightness, which has increased every year. In the labs though, the story is very different. The use of macromolecular species like polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) in conjunction with the use of phosphorescent species such as Ir for printed OLEDs have exhibited brightnesses as high as 10,000  nits. So it's not as if the technology has peaked already. LCD/LED in its various forms have been around for more than 40 years, so have had so many years to mature. OLED in comparison is only a baby. Self emitting technology will always be superior and accurate, that's Physics. You can create a full array backlight of upto 512 zones, or micro LED to create upto 10000 zones, with each zone able to switch itself off independent of others. But they're nowhere near the 8 million pixels individually capable of doing the same which the OLED does. It will be interesting to see where OLED would be, by the time micro LED is commercially viable and competing on price.

To me I think it's about competitiveness. Would hitting 10,000 nits be profitable commercially with Oleds? What would be the next tech around the corner.

Doing things in lab in totally different from a real world commercial product and pricing. Oled till now is still only manufactured by LG, not a good prospect for competitiveness and improvement of technology.

I may be wrong but Oled has to get much cheaper to manufacture really quickly, cause new tech is always around the corner.

 

[bigboss]

If you had posted this 5 years ago, I would have agreed. But I don't think that is the case now. LG uses what’s called WRGB OLED where each pixel is a combination of a white OLED with red, green and blue filters, thus avoiding the need to use a blue OLED at all. It's the blue OLED that decays with time. The new LG OLED panels reduce to half brightness after 100000 (hundred thousand) hours, which is far more than anyone would keep their TV for. With regards to power consumption, it's minimal really. All modern TVs consume about £20-£30 worth of power in the entire year. So the power consumption is nowhere near "significant" as you claim. The first generation OLED TV reached 370 nits brightness, which has increased every year. In the labs though, the story is very different. The use of macromolecular species like polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) in conjunction with the use of phosphorescent species such as Ir for printed OLEDs have exhibited brightnesses as high as 10,000  nits. So it's not as if the technology has peaked already. LCD/LED in its various forms have been around for more than 40 years, so have had so many years to mature. OLED in comparison is only a baby. Self emitting technology will always be superior and accurate, that's Physics. You can create a full array backlight of upto 512 zones, or micro LED to create upto 10000 zones, with each zone able to switch itself off independent of others. But they're nowhere near the 8 million pixels individually capable of doing the same which the OLED does. It will be interesting to see where OLED would be, by the time micro LED is commercially viable and competing on price.

To me I think it's about competitiveness. Would hitting 10,000 nits be profitable commercially with Oleds? What would be the next tech around the corner.

Doing things in lab in totally different from a real world commercial product and pricing. Oled till now is still only manufactured by LG, not a good prospect for competitiveness and improvement of technology.

I may be wrong but Oled has to get much cheaper to manufacture really quickly, cause new tech is always around the corner.

Currently, only LG has the patent for WRGB technology. Samsung bowed out because it couldn't find any other way to overcome blue decay. Once that patent expires, or another technology develops, more players will come in. There's another Chinese manufacturer who makes OLED panels. Currently, LG's profits are soaring due to being the only major OLED panels manufacturer. So it isn't going away anytime soon. Samsung is good at marketing and confusing customers by using terms like "QLED" which closely resembles OLED.

If you see the prices of latest Sony OLED TVs, they're very competitive and comparable to even LED TVs.

 

[cs2011]

Following months, if not years of denials, and accusing customers of misusing their OLED TVs, LG have finally come clean and admitted that there is a problem 'panel variance' with their screen manufacturing. It seems to be temperature related, and causes some but not all panels to exhibit image retention. There is a fix fortunately.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

No doubt the lawyers wil be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of $multi-million class action lawsuits, given that LG have lied to their customers.

 

[Native_bon]

Qled is the future, cause it will take the best of Oled & LED to produce screens of the near future.(2yrs or there about) Samsung show case the technology at CES this year, and it really does seem like a winner. I still think Oled has too many problems at this moment in time.

 

[Series1boy]

I don’t think OLED is going any where, it’s only starting to get going.

everybody is banging on about how much nits they can do but it’s not all about this. For example lcd TVs at the time have always being brighter than plasma. When I had my plasma calibrated the brightness was turned down.

I appreciate HDR is a big enhancement, but do TVs need to be any higher than 1000 nits??

screen burn, again there was the same potential issue to hit plasma. I have 2 plasma TVs, 1 is 9 years old in the bedroom and the 2nd is my VT and I have no screen burn, none what so ever.

Yeah I agree there are issues with OLED, but these are minimal and I don’t think you’ll see them unless you go looking for them. The same goes for lcd!

OLED is going no where, apart from improving as did plasma, and also lcd is till improving..

 

[buzz_lightclick]

If you had posted this 5 years ago, I would have agreed. But I don't think that is the case now. LG uses what’s called WRGB OLED where each pixel is a combination of a white OLED with red, green and blue filters, thus avoiding the need to use a blue OLED at all. It's the blue OLED that decays with time. The new LG OLED panels reduce to half brightness after 100000 (hundred thousand) hours, which is far more than anyone would keep their TV for. With regards to power consumption, it's minimal really. All modern TVs consume about £20-£30 worth of power in the entire year. So the power consumption is nowhere near "significant" as you claim. The first generation OLED TV reached 370 nits brightness, which has increased every year. In the labs though, the story is very different. The use of macromolecular species like polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) in conjunction with the use of phosphorescent species such as Ir for printed OLEDs have exhibited brightnesses as high as 10,000 nits. So it's not as if the technology has peaked already. LCD/LED in its various forms have been around for more than 40 years, so have had so many years to mature. OLED in comparison is only a baby. Self emitting technology will always be superior and accurate, that's Physics. You can create a full array backlight of upto 512 zones, or micro LED to create upto 10000 zones, with each zone able to switch itself off independent of others. But they're nowhere near the 8 million pixels individually capable of doing the same which the OLED does. It will be interesting to see where OLED would be, by the time micro LED is commercially viable and competing on price.

To me I think it's about competitiveness. Would hitting 10,000 nits be profitable commercially with Oleds? What would be the next tech around the corner.

Doing things in lab in totally different from a real world commercial product and pricing. Oled till now is still only manufactured by LG, not a good prospect for competitiveness and improvement of technology.

I may be wrong but Oled has to get much cheaper to manufacture really quickly, cause new tech is always around the corner.

If you see the prices of latest Sony OLED TVs, they're very competitive and comparable to even LED TVs.

That’s because the AF8, which is the latest Sony OLED, is using last year’s technology found in the A1, with the only difference being the traditional upright stand rather than having a kick stand like the A1.

 

[bigboss]

If you had posted this 5 years ago, I would have agreed. But I don't think that is the case now. LG uses what’s called WRGB OLED where each pixel is a combination of a white OLED with red, green and blue filters, thus avoiding the need to use a blue OLED at all. It's the blue OLED that decays with time. The new LG OLED panels reduce to half brightness after 100000 (hundred thousand) hours, which is far more than anyone would keep their TV for. With regards to power consumption, it's minimal really. All modern TVs consume about £20-£30 worth of power in the entire year. So the power consumption is nowhere near "significant" as you claim. The first generation OLED TV reached 370 nits brightness, which has increased every year. In the labs though, the story is very different. The use of macromolecular species like polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) in conjunction with the use of phosphorescent species such as Ir for printed OLEDs have exhibited brightnesses as high as 10,000  nits. So it's not as if the technology has peaked already. LCD/LED in its various forms have been around for more than 40 years, so have had so many years to mature. OLED in comparison is only a baby. Self emitting technology will always be superior and accurate, that's Physics. You can create a full array backlight of upto 512 zones, or micro LED to create upto 10000 zones, with each zone able to switch itself off independent of others. But they're nowhere near the 8 million pixels individually capable of doing the same which the OLED does. It will be interesting to see where OLED would be, by the time micro LED is commercially viable and competing on price.

To me I think it's about competitiveness. Would hitting 10,000 nits be profitable commercially with Oleds? What would be the next tech around the corner.

Doing things in lab in totally different from a real world commercial product and pricing. Oled till now is still only manufactured by LG, not a good prospect for competitiveness and improvement of technology.

I may be wrong but Oled has to get much cheaper to manufacture really quickly, cause new tech is always around the corner.

If you see the prices of latest Sony OLED TVs, they're very competitive and comparable to even LED TVs.

That’s because the AF8, which is the latest Sony OLED, is using last year’s technology found in the A1, with the only difference being the traditional upright stand rather than having a kick stand like the A1. 

Don't think that matters much, as long as it's hitting certain price points to gain further market share.

 

[bigboss]

Qled is the future, cause it will take the best of Oled & LED to produce screens of the near future.(2yrs or there about) Samsung show case the technology at CES this year, and it really does seem like a winner. I still think Oled has too many problems at this moment in time.

I attended a TV shootout last year, where they compared OLED with QLED. My thoughts here.

Similar results when HDTV Test arranged a TV shootout too.

 

[bigboss]

Following months, if not years of denials, and accusing customers of misusing their OLED TVs, LG have finally come clean and admitted that there is a problem 'panel variance' with their screen manufacturing.  It seems to be temperature related, and causes some but not all panels to exhibit image retention.  There is a fix fortunately.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/real-life-oled-burn-in-test

No doubt the lawyers wil be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of $multi-million class action lawsuits, given that LG have lied to their customers.

Can you post reference to LG attracting lawsuits due to "admitting"?

RTings site keeps the TVs on for 20 hours a day which isn't normal TV watching.

 

[Tonestar1]

[font="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"]QLED isn't a technology, it a dubious marketing campaign by Samsung purely designed to confuse customers. It's an LED with a couple of minor tweaks. I don't get why people are using the term as if it's a technology in it's own right.[/font]
[font="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"]Micro LED is a different thing altogether and may be a gamechanger. I can't see that reaching affordable levels (2k or less for a 55) for three years at least. So for the moment OLED is still king, further improvements to the technology may see it match or even surpass micro led by the time it's finally hit mass market. [/font]

 

[bigboss]

QLED isn't a technology, it a dubious marketing campaign by Samsung purely designed to confuse customers. It's an LED with a couple of minor tweaks.  I don't get why people are using the term as if it's a technology in it's own right.

Correct. QLED is a marketing name used by Samsung to describe their newer LED TVs. They use traditional LCD panels lit using LEDs. Between the LCD layer and the backlight, a filter with energy reactive nano-particles filters the light to produce more pure and saturated colors. Recent high-end LED TVs use a very similar light filtering plane as QLED TVs which helps them produce a wide color gamut.

 

[cs2011]

Can you post reference to LG attracting lawsuits due to "admitting"?
RTings site keeps the TVs on for 20 hours a day which isn't normal TV watching.

From that link:

04/10/2018: We contacted LG regarding the strange results in week 4. LG engineers visited our lab a few days ago and were able to confirm the 25% window on the Live CNN and FIFA 18 TVs are a result of a factory issue (see our video here). OLED TVs are produced in a hot process, and after cooling a 25% window is shown on each panel. Some TVs which haven't cooled completely can produce invalid results for the lookup table used by the 'Pixel Refresh' function, causing this 25% window to become visible. Only some 55" OLED TVs were affected during part of 2017.
As this is not an issue with the panel itself, it is possible to apply a fix to the lookup table. LG will apply this fix to anyone who presents this issue to their support, for free, even after the warranty period has long expired. They have fixed our two affected TVs (see the uniformity photos below). Note that this doesn't fix other uniformity issues as the result of static content, only the 25% window caused by a factory defect. LG has also confirmed that there is variation between panels, which is why some OLED appear more prone to developing uniformity issues (as in the case with our Live CNN (200 nits) vs Live CNN (Max).)

BTW, the 20 hours per day test was the earlier test. The latest test is far more realistic, and uses the latest LG TVs.

 

[Native_bon]

QLED isn't a technology, it a dubious marketing campaign by Samsung purely designed to confuse customers. It's an LED with a couple of minor tweaks.  I don't get why people are using the term as if it's a technology in it's own right.

Micro LED is a different thing altogether and may be a gamechanger. I can't see that reaching affordable levels (2k or less for a 55) for three years at least. So for the moment OLED is still king, further improvements to the technology may see it match or even surpass micro led by the time it's finally hit mass market. 

Micro led was what I was actually referring to my apologies for wrong terminology. This will give Oled much bigger problems when it comes to brightness and image retention.

We need more competition to bring prices down. I may be wrong but would like to see how LG will manage higher peak brightness without the risk of image retention and keeping prices in check.

IMO, the Xe93 is extremely good value for money, and I personally come to the conclusion Oled's price to performance ratio is relatively not really good.

I would like to see Oled perform better I don't think it's quite there yet considering pricing.

 

[Sliced Bread]

When I bought my latest screen just over a year ago I started researching the technologies and got frustrated with all the pro's and con's of each one.

In the end I just viewed the sets and bought the one which to my eye looked the best, regardless of technology. At that time it was an LG OLED.

If I shopped today that may very well change.

 

[bigboss]

Can you post reference to LG attracting lawsuits due to "admitting"?

RTings site keeps the TVs on for 20 hours a day which isn't normal TV watching.

From that link:

04/10/2018: We contacted LG regarding the strange results in week 4. LG engineers visited our lab a few days ago and were able to confirm the 25% window on the Live CNN and FIFA 18 TVs are a result of a factory issue (see our video here). OLED TVs are produced in a hot process, and after cooling a 25% window is shown on each panel. Some TVs which haven't cooled completely can produce invalid results for the lookup table used by the 'Pixel Refresh' function, causing this 25% window to become visible. Only some 55" OLED TVs were affected during part of 2017.As this is not an issue with the panel itself, it is possible to apply a fix to the lookup table. LG will apply this fix to anyone who presents this issue to their support, for free, even after the warranty period has long expired. They have fixed our two affected TVs (see the uniformity photos below). Note that this doesn't fix other uniformity issues as the result of static content, only the 25% window caused by a factory defect. LG has also confirmed that there is variation between panels, which is why some OLED appear more prone to developing uniformity issues (as in the case with our Live CNN (200 nits) vs Live CNN (Max).)

BTW, the 20 hours per day test was the earlier test.  The latest test is far more realistic, and uses the latest LG TVs.

So, there was a batch of 55-inch TVs in 2017 which had this issue and not all OLEDs in general. Correct? How does this attract lawsuits?

 

[bigboss]

When I bought my latest screen just over a year ago I started researching the technologies and got frustrated with all the pro's and con's of each one.

In the end I just viewed the sets and bought the one which to my eye looked the best, regardless of technology.  At that time it was an LG OLED.

If I shopped today that may very well change.

 

That's the key. Buy the TV which looks best to you regardless of technology. Even plasma TVs were supposed to be prone to IR and screenburn but I never faced this with 5 years of owning the Kuro and now 4 years (+ 2 years of gel's ownership) of Panasonic VT65 plasma.

 

[cs2011]

So, there was a batch of 55-inch TVs in 2017 which had this issue and not all OLEDs in general. Correct? How does this attract lawsuits?

Because they have now confirmed there is manufacturing variability issue which causes some OLED TVs to exhibit screen burn or other problems. Previously, they denied there was a problem, and tried to apportion all blame on users for watching too much static content. If you read reports in other forums, you will find that some customers have reported screen burn in a few weeks, whereas others report no problems even after a few years.

"Note that this doesn't fix other uniformity issues as the result of static content, only the 25% window caused by a factory defect. LG has also confirmed that there is variation between panels, which is why some OLED appear more prone to developing uniformity issues"

They even tried to exclude screen burn from the warranty, but they lost a recent court case about that. I think it is inevitable that there will be more legal action against LG.

 

[Native_bon]

So, there was a batch of 55-inch TVs in 2017 which had this issue and not all OLEDs in general. Correct? How does this attract lawsuits?

Because they have now confirmed there is manufacturing variability issue which causes some OLED TVs to exhibit screen burn or other problems. Previously, they denied there was a problem, and tried to apportion all blame on users for watching too much static content. If you read reports in other forums, you will find that some customers have reported screen burn in a few weeks, whereas others report no problems even after a few years.

"Note that this doesn't fix other uniformity issues as the result of static content, only the 25% window caused by a factory defect. LG has also confirmed that there is variation between panels, which is why some OLED appear more prone to developing uniformity issues"

They even tried to exclude screen burn from the warranty, but they lost a recent court case about that. I think it is inevitable that there will be more legal action against LG.

Agree, we need more legal actions inorder to at least maintain some balance, if not could come to a point were we have no say in type of service rendered to us the customer. *smile*

 

[Tonestar1]

So, there was a batch of 55-inch TVs in 2017 which had this issue and not all OLEDs in general. Correct? How does this attract lawsuits?

Because they have now confirmed there is manufacturing variability issue which causes some OLED TVs to exhibit screen burn or other problems. Previously, they denied there was a problem, and tried to apportion all blame on users for watching too much static content. If you read reports in other forums, you will find that some customers have reported screen burn in a few weeks, whereas others report no problems even after a few years.

"Note that this doesn't fix other uniformity issues as the result of static content, only the 25% window caused by a factory defect. LG has also confirmed that there is variation between panels, which is why some OLED appear more prone to developing uniformity issues"

They even tried to exclude screen burn from the warranty, but they lost a recent court case about that. I think it is inevitable that there will be more legal action against LG.

Agree, we need more legal actions inorder to at least maintain some balance, if not could come to a point were we have no say in type of service rendered to us the customer. *smile*

I'm not sure lmore legal actions is the best way forward. Proper customer service and refunds/repairs if people are not happy would be a far better option, no need to give the laywers any more money surely.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Demoed some of the Samsung’s TVs today and the new LG Oled again and Oled is clearly best at the moment, so it must have a future. I haven’t got screen burn or image retention on any of my Oleds so far. Had it on plasma and LCD. And seen it on Sony TVs LEDs where there was a screen uniformity issue resulting in a black line down the screen. Never seen any issues with Oleds in store at shops either which must be the litmus test.